Thanks to a project shipping at work, a family vacation, and a mother in the hospital, it's been a very busy couple of months! This means that I haven't been able to get a release of Northwest Trails out for a while and so this one is packed with new submissions.

There have been some significant changes behind the scenes on the project as well. You'll note that the downloads are considerably smaller now despite containing more data. This is because I have moved from using GPSMapEdit for generating the Polish MP files (the files used to compile the map images that install on your computer and in your GPS) to Global Mapper. With Global Mapper, I can automate the entire mapset creation process so that once I have all of the trail changes in the database, I can effectively push a button, sit back, and wait for the process to pop out the finished install package. It saves a lot of manual effort and reduces the chance for human error in that sequence of steps. Global Mapper also stores the data displayed for different zoom levels in a different way than GPSMapEdit, leading to the smaller file size.

I now have the Northwest Topos process automated as well, which is an even larger time saver and will mean that I can release Northwest Trails and Northwest Topos concurrently with the same up-to-date trail information. First, though, I need to get some other changes in for Northwest Topos before releasing the next version.

With a lot of changes like this the chance for some kinks and errors is more likely, so please let me know if you run into any issues. Thanks and enjoy!